Xena Warrior Princess: The Beginning
by Bruteaous
Summary: I always used to wonder what Xena's childhood and background before the flashbacks in the series were like. This is my interpretation.


_**Xena Warrior Princess: The Beginning**_

**Disclaimer:**Let me begin by saying that I do not own Xena or any of the characters from the show and this story is written only for the entertainment of myself and other readers on .

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**One: Legends**

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"So it was then that the young Leander swam out into the sea again to meet his beloved Hero, but this time a strong westerly wind was blowing and it blew out the torch in her bedroom window and poor Leander drowned, confused, in the waves," Atrius intoned dramatically, sitting on a wooden stool in front of the hearth as his three children sat on the tavern floor at his feet.

His young daughter Xena gasped, while his ten year old son Toris sighed, disappointed. Lyceus, at four was still too young to really understand the full story, but he looked between his two siblings and then to his father wide-eyed, knowing that the feeling in his father's voice had become solemn and that meant something. Xena, at six, was the most precocious of the three and she leaned forward, excited to know what happened next.

"What happened to Hero, papa?" she asked expectantly.

"She woke up in the morning, ran down to the city, and gave up on love entirely," Toris supplied, crossing his arms over his chest. "Ouch! That hurt!"

Xena immediately socked her brother in the shoulder and berated him for his boorishness, "I asked papa, not you! Does she, papa, give up on love?"

Atrius smiled a hollow smile that made the angles of his thin face light up in the glow of the cooking fire and his light blue eyes—so much like his daughter's—shine in amusement.

"No, my girl, she didn't, but I am afraid nor did she decide to go on living. The loss of her beloved Leander was too much to bear so, in a fit of grief, she threw herself from the cliff she lived on down into the sea never to be seen again," Atrius proclaimed grimly. "The end."

"Thank the gods," Toris sighed, leaning back against the floor comfortably.

"Awww, sheep poop, I was hoping this one would at least have a happy ending," Xena pouted, her blue eyes swollen with disappointment and the hope that it wasn't time for them to go to bed yet. "Tell us another story, papa, please?"

Atrius wiped his palms on his soldier's leggings and looked at his wife who was drying the goblets she had just finished washing with a piece of wool cloth and watching him with an unreadable expression on her face.

"No, no, children, that's enough for tonight," Atrius said, standing and turning his back to them.

Cyrene knew her cue. She cleared her throat and said, "To bed, children."

"But the stars aren't even out yet," Toris groaned, pointing to the darkening sky visible through the partially propped open window.

"Yeah!" Xena and Lyceus pitched in.

"Now," Cyrene commanded. Then, "I'll be in to tuck you into your beds in a minute."

"This bites," Toris grumbled, opening the hall door and disappearing down the corridor towards the family's rooms.

"Toris! You stay away from my stuff!" Xena shouted, crawling to her feet.

Toris' voice floated down the hall after his rushing footsteps, "Make me!"

"I mean it!" Xena growled and ran off towards her room.

Lyceus followed at her heels and the sounds of scuffling and a slamming door let Cyrene and Atrius know they were finally alone. Atrius had meandered his way into the kitchen comfortably during all of the commotion and was now standing in front of the door to the pantry. The unexpectedly locked door to the pantry.

"What's this?" Atrius asked, turning back to his wife and holding up a padlock latched to the door and wall with a chain.

Cyrene set the last of the goblets onto the counter and removed her serving apron.

"What does it look like?"

"I thought you didn't lock the larder up in the evenings? Just the kitchen?"

"Well, there's no man around for me to rely upon, just me and the children, and the complete strangers who rent the rooms around us, so yes, I lock it. You'd know that if you were home more than a week or two a year," Cyrene said, tossing the drying rag onto the countertop and making for the children's rooms. The sound of wood breaking stopped her.

Atrius had moved. He wasn't holding the padlock anymore. Instead, he was leaning forward, legs spread, with his fist buried in the cedar door of the pantry. When he reclaimed his hand, a large dent, splintered enough to smell the bread and goat's cheese inside opened up in the pantry door.

"Hera's tits! I don't know what you want from me, woman. I've done everything a good husband should. I built you this tavern, gave you children, and visit when I can, but will you stop nagging on me? No!" Atrius shouted into the silence, "and now that I am home, I can't even get a proper meal in my own home."

"You know what time I serve dinner here and if you can't be home by that time because you're out celebrating with your soldier friends then you don't deserve to eat," Cyrene said.

Atrius shook his head, "stop your badgering, woman, and just leave me in peace."

"When you're dead!" Cyrene bellowed back, disappearing down the corridor and slamming the door behind her.

"You'll rue that day, woman!" Atrius growled, kicking the pantry door this time so that the small door split in two. "I know I already rue the day that I took you to bed. I could have had that farmer Nicas's daughter—what was her name—oh yes, Clea. Bet she doesn't fill her husband's ears full of complaints every time he comes home."

Atrius stomped into the pantry and grabbed a couple amphorae of Illyrian wine in one hand and a haunch of salted venison in the other then ambled out of the kitchen through the tavern door and into the night.

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"What do you think they're fighting about now?" Xena asked, as she rolled onto her side and propped her head up on one hand.

The dark booming voice of their father like thunder from heaven reverberated through the walls again and Lyceus whimpered beneath his blanket. Toris shook his head, unusually uneasy. For all of his crassness, Toris was perhaps the one most upset by his parents' fights when his father came home from war. Atrius, like his brothers and father before him, was a mercenary paid by city states bordering the mainland to fight in their armies against the raiding parties of Thracian barbarians who were always causing trouble. Because his chosen occupation was soldiering for money that he very seldom brought home to his family, Atrius wasn't in Amphipolis as often as many of the other husbands and fathers were who had local jobs. A few of the men, like Atrius's brothers and uncles were soldiers too, but not many. Most were farmers or tradesmen or something useful and rooted down so they could be close to their families. But Atrius was adamant that he would never be like that and Cyrene had always wanted the opposite so that was where the main problem between them lay. Cyrene believed that her husband should be home with his family, helping to raise his own children to grow up to be decent people, not carousing around Greece in a paid band of killers.

Their mother's voice came next—shrill and emotional—and then the kitchen door slammed distantly shut as slow footsteps made their way down the hallway.

"Here she comes," Xena said sadly.

Lyceus shuffled out of his blankets and he was waiting for Cyrene at the bedroom door when she opened it.

"Mama," he simpered, reaching for her to pick him up.

Cyrene hefted him up and cradled Lyceus in her arms, running her work-worn fingers through his soft blonde curls and trying to comfort him. He was still sniveling softly when she sat down with him on the mattress of the bed the children shared. Xena sat up and hugged her knobby knees, watching her mother comfort Lyceus, cooing softly to him as his fears ebbed away. Once Lyceus had quieted, Cyrene laid him back down and tucked the wool blanket in around his shoulders.

"Did papa leave again?" Xena asked, laying back against the straw mattress and put her arms beneath her head.

Cyrene turned to Xena and began tucking her in, "I don't know."

"Why do you always have to drive him off whenever he comes home?" Xena asked, blue eyes staring up at Cyrene for an answer.

Cyrene met her daughter's steely gaze. Already at six, Xena had a sense of self and a hardness that most children let along adults never developed, but it seemed to spring from her fully formed like Athena's birth from Zeus's head and Cyrene didn't like seeing that side of her daughter. It reminded her too much of Atrius. Toris was long and gangly and boorish, but non-threatening. Lyceus was an angel with his soft hair and sweet disposition towards everyone no matter whether they were friend or foe. Cyrene could see flashes of herself in each one of her sons from time to time, expressions or little things that they did that reminded her of herself. However, when Cyrene looked at Xena, all she saw were reflections of her husband. She saw them in Xena's dark hair, her clear blue eyes, the rectangle set of her torso, and the pleased grin that usually beamed out of her face when she was happy instead of Cyrene's more reserved smile. Out of all of her children, there was no doubt that Xena had inherited the most from Atrius and it was hard sometimes for mother and daughter to connect because of their own biases.

Cyrene because of her grudge against who she saw as a worthless husband and Xena because she preferred her father over her mother.

Cyrene looked down into her daughter's eyes, firmly reinstating her authority in their home.

"Your father makes his own decisions. I've never been much of an influence on whether he stays or whether he leaves," Cyrene said. "But I'm here and I love all of you very much."

"Mother!" Xena cringed and her mother kissed her cheek then Toris's and Lyceus's. "Ack! I love you too even though your sloppy kisses are silly."

"I'm glad," Cyrene said getting up and wiping her eyes. "Goodnight, my loves."

She blew out all of the candles in the room and closed the door quietly behind her.

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Atrius came back early the next morning. There was straw in his disheveled black hair and he smelled like wine and animal shit which meant that he had most likely spent the night in the stables connected to a rival Inn across town. The children had already had their breakfast and were playing in the fields with others their own age when he came stomping into Cyrene's tavern. The patrons noticed him first. Tulius the gloat herder almost didn't recognize Atrius beneath his unkempt appearance and a few newly added scars, but his drunken pride gave Atrius away before anything else could.

"Cyrene!" Atrius bellowed, stumbling up to the counter and leaning pitifully. "Cyrene!"

Cyrene circled out of the kitchen, not giving her husband a second glance, and refilled the glasses of two diners. When she was done tending to her customers and stood behind the counter as if she were simply taking some stranger's order.

"Yes, what can I get for you?" she asked.

Atrius's expression was plain and defeated. He looked, smelled, and sounded like a man only inches away from being sent up the river Styx, but his voice—all though still raspy and drunk from the night before—was sturdy and strong.

"I'm sorry. I'm very…sorry," Atrius began, belching in the middle of his apology.

Earlier in their marriage an apology like this one used to work. Cyrene would forgive her husband all of his absences and unkind insults and pity him because he'd obviously suffered all night puking up wine and rolling around unconscious in horse dung. However, now Cyrene was a woman of much harder edges and she was not so easily taken in by her husband's public displays of alcohol induced guilt.

"Are you?" Cyrene asked, narrowing her eyes at him and staring him down.

Atrius belched again and put his sword hand over his heart, "You are the love of my life. I knew when I met you that…excuse me…I would spend the rest of my days with you and our brats. You're a beautiful and good woman and I haven't always treated you as well as I should have. Hell…I hardly ever treat you as well as you deserve these days, but all that will change. I am going to make myself a new man, devoted completely to you and our kids. Please, baby, forgive me?"

Cyrene stifled the urge to smile and hug the miserable oaf. Though this sort of drunk apology was common, never before had he seemed like he meant it so much and she was moved to take him back, but instead of showing it, she sniffed and eyed him harshly.

"You need a bath, Cyrene said. "Follow me to the back and I will draw you one."

Atrius burped one more time and wiped his mouth on his gauntlet.

"It's good to be home," he said.

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**_Leave a review and let me know what you think so far. Hope everyone enjoyed it. :]_**


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